Sage's new grinding rail

Sage bought himself a grinding rail for skateboarding. Check out his moves - 20 degree weather doesn't slow him down!

Family T-shirt Projects

I saw a fun project for making your own screen print t-shirts using freezer paper. Aparently this has been done by many people so if you google it you will find the instructions. Or you can go right to the Reynolds site and they tell you how. Basically you cut a stencil out of the freezer paper and after ironing it on, paint it in using fabric paint - let it dry and wear your new cool shirt.

Tony thought this sounded fun, so we decided to have a family project day. All the designs for the stencils are Tony's original designs except for Ryan's rocket which was a stamp. We loved how they came out and want to make more for the etsy shop!!


Tony's bubble blowing boy. I like this one alot!

Sage's eagle is too cool

Ryan's rocket

My tree logo that Tony made for my Natural Playgarden etsy shop

Brothers Bonding

A nice moment - the 2 boys were looking at books about the moon and discussing them with one another. It is nice that even with almost 8 years between them, they can find things to do together.

Our New Family Car

We bought a much needed new/used car. And guess what - it is a mini van!! I never pictured myself driving a minivan - I felt the Jeep Cherokee suited my personality. my friend Kim told me I would get over that feeling once I started driving the van around. I knew she was right, but I just can't help but to feel that I still feel I am more suited to a Jeep.



I have passed the keys to the Jeep over to Tony. Now he will have reliable transportation and will stay warm for the rest of the winter (his Vw did not have heat - or air - or a radio ...)






Ryan and I took the new car out to run a few errands and the car is GREAT! It runs smoothly and it is nice not to have to shift gears anymore. In my advanced age (as Tony puts it -lol) My back starts to hurt after driving the Jeep for long periods of time. The only excitting part of having a new van is that we do not have to rent one to take trips!!

These are some wild turkeys we saw on the side of the road as we were coming home. I couldnt pass up the photo op!!



The Jeep - always will be a good friend!

Ryan's new knitted hat

Ryan picked this yarn out many months ago on one of our trips to the yarn store and asked me to make him a hat.

WELL - I finally did! This is my first hat with a ribbed brim and earflaps. I was surprised how easy it was to put earflaps on!!

The following pictures are of MR. GQ modeling the hat.

Our Evergreen Lesson

Ryan and spent the last 2 weeks learning about Evergreens. We took walks in the woods to look at the different conifers trees, painted pictures and told stories about the trees.


This is my contribution to our lesson - circle of trees. I attempted to draw the Juniper,Pine,Fir and Hemlock. As you can tell they are very loose interpretations - it came out pretty though.


On our Thursday watercolor painting day , Ryan painted this beautiful picture of an Oak tree from our story of Why the Evergreens keep their leaves all winter.


Below is just to show you how we usually set up our water color painting area. I set in front of us just a few things related to our story for the week and have a candle ready. Our story the painting was inspired by was called Why the Evergreen Trees Keep Their Leaves in Winter
http://www.rickwalton.com/folktale/bryant63.htm

Wed. is block crayon drawing day. Here is Ryan's Evergreen picture. On the back he practiced his letters by writing out the first letter of the trees.

For our 2nd story we chose Silver Fir Cones and did a puppet show of the story.
http://www.spiritoftrees.org/folktales/karas/silver_fir_cones.html

Now outside to look at the trees:

An added bonus animal prints the first set looks like squirrel and the 2nd set is deer.

The Hemlock leaves Are flat and soft. We discovered that the woods behind our house are full of Hemlocks.

The Pine needles look alot like a wisk broom. There are only a few of these behind our house.

The view at the end of the trail behind our house:

Here is our winter nature table with King Winter and an Evergreen tree!

Snow!!!!!!!

Sat afternoon family hike

It was a beautiful day so we decided to go to the "Sleeping Giant" for a walk. The mountain is called sleeping giant because when you see it from afar it looks like a giant sleeping - hence the name!! It is a beautiful place and would take years to explore the whole thing. Ryan and I take many walks here along the river that leads to a slight incline of rocks - perfect size for Ryan to rock climb. This particular path eventually ends up at the foot of an old rock quary.
The rocks were 2 slippery though to take Sage and Tony to see our cool discovery - but next time we will!

On the way to the mountain we saw a very large red fox crossing the road ! It was soo cool. fortunatly the car behind me thought so too and slowed down as well!

For Grandpa! Finally a basketball video

Sewing and Cooking with Ryan

I was hemming my pants this morning and Ryan decided to sew the cuffs I cut off. Yes, he is wearing one as a headband.

Here is Ryan choping onions for our Butternut Squash/Apple soup. No fingers were harmed in the making of this video!

I Found where King Winter has been living

Today Ryan and I met our homeschool co-op friends at Salmon Brook park. I was not prepared for all the snow there! So now we know King Winter has been living about an hour north-east of us in Granby!! It was beautiful to see the smow around the brook. It was a good reminder that it is still January. Now when we say our morning verse we can think of Salmon Brook Park until we have snow again in Cheshire :

White on every tree limb
Snow falls from the sky
Cold clear nights of January
Sparkling stars on high.




As we were walking back to our cars Tonya noticed this tree that had been cut down by beavers!!!! It was so cool to see.

A much needed trip to the playground!!!

Play is the heart of childhood

This morning Ryan was in a very snuggly mood, so as soon as Daddy and Sage left for the day he and I laid on the couch and I read a chapter from our new book "Puck the Gnome" .

After that I did a little yoga while he played and as you can see from the picture of the boats on the yoga mat, anything can become a river!

On to snack. We made blueberry-oatmeal bars and played a game ( our snack time ritual)

Ryan decided that it was time to hang out the silks so we spent some time washing and hanging out our silks to dry. I felt that was a good time to bring in our story for the week. I have been telling the story of Why the Evergreens stay Green. In the story a little bird has a broken wing and cannot fly south for the winter. He decided to ask the trees if they will keep their leaves all winter for him to stay warm. The Birch,Oak and Willow all told the little bird that they must rest in the winter and cannot keep their leaves. Soon the bird comes to a Spruce tree who says that he will keep his leaves for him to stay warm and the Pine and Juniper all did the same.

Once the story was over we fixed up our "farm" and played a bit with the table puppets.

We do so much in one day that I can never remember all the details at the end of the day. We had a great day learning about evergreens, baking,cooking, coloring with block crayons and just being together.

A warm January day! Where did King Winter go?

Today was unseasonably warm and it made Ryan and I wonder what happened to King Winter?? We took advantage of the warm day and spent most of it outdoors. He received this wooden barn bird house from his grandparents for Christmas - so we decided today was a good day to put it together. As he was painting it yellow he told me that he was going to give it to Lynn his Clay class teacher since she likes birds and the color yellow. Normally Ryan likes to keep what he makes so it was a very nice gesture to hear him think of giving something to someone else without mommy's nudging. I dont know when we will see Lynn, but I sure hope we remember to bring her the bird house!!!